This autonomic supply chain management system transforms timely affordable delivery of assets/spares to warfighters. Today's current military and commercial automatic Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems are stovepiped, non-deployable, antiquated batched computer-processing systems. They are personpower labor intense requiring several handoffs between the user/requester and supply personnel at various storage sites, and take on average near 12-hours (some up to 24-hours) to process a requisition authorization for an asset(s)/spare(s). That is, to process the authorization to ship it or be advised it is not available in inventory—this does not include the time to perform the pick, pack and delivery transportation. Most SCM system designers would be happy for a future average of about two hours to process an automatic requisition to advise the user whether the asset(s) is available in inventory. And the two hours does not include processing the retrograde or replenishment transactions, versus this autonomic online/real-time processing system for all three requisition transactions.
Online processing immediately records the requisition transaction in the appropriate database(s) and provides real-time results. Whereas the antiquated batch processing collects inputs in a queue/file over time and enters them into the database at one time in a batch. Most of today's SCM systems were designed years ago as batched computer processing systems. That is, even though they may utilize mainframe computers they query another computer and must wait for a response, which could be 12 to 24-hours later. Years ago mainframe central processor unit time was expensive so they were implemented to do much of the processing in off-hours to reduce costs, thus the delay, especially SCM systems implemented in the 1980s, many of which are in use today. This is unacceptable for today's agile SCM high speed delivery requirements such as some Department of Defense (DoD) programs that require requisition authorization and delivery of some Continental United States (CONUS) spares/assets within 18-hours from requisition initiation.
For large military programs billions of dollars in reduced SCM personpower and reduced inventory can be saved by ASCMS during a vehicles lifetime of Operation and Service (O&S) period, and timelier asset deliveries are accomplished. A program's O&S period lifetime cost that typically costs 70% of a programs total can be expected to be reduced to 50% or below through use of an ASCMS, in part due to vastly reduced/eliminated SCM personpower needs, reduced size inventories as a result of the improved inventory turn rates, and faster delivery transportation. On a major DoD program now going through system development and demonstration phase a preliminary estimate of savings with this type autonomic system is a peacetime cost savings of $4.5 to $5 billion (in today dollars), and an O&S lifetime total operating cost savings including reduced inventory of over $100 billion dollars. But even more important than costs savings, is winning a conflict tempo surge by getting the right asset, to the right place, at the right time, in the right quantity.
It is projected an ASCMS versus today's automatic SCM systems can achieve improvement in time-definite delivery standards and every SCM metric, some of the more important improvements are as follows:                Annual inventory turn-rate improvement of better than 3.5 to 1;        Assets inventory reduction up to 70-percent;        Fill rate improvements of 25-percent;        On time Material Delivery Performance Effectiveness (MDPE) in excess of 99-percent;        Non-wartime transportation cost reduction of at least 12-percent.        
ASCMS is designed to operate either with an intelligent agent “smart” Distributed Secure Information System (DSIS) or non-smart DSIS. It is envisioned in the not too distant future when atom/nano-computers are mainstream and capable of artificial intelligence, ASCMS will be able to operate over “brilliant” DSIS network-centric warfare networks capable of self-repair or rerouting around network outages, thus providing even greater SCM pipeline agility, efficiency, affordability and supportability to the warfighter.
Availability of spare assets is the backbone of logistics. Although there are 11-DoD logistics elements, if one were to ask a user/maintainer what the word logistics means to them, they most likely would respond with “spares.”